CLERGY CORNER: ‘We’ve lost touch with our own power’

Fully two-thirds of eligible voters didn’t show up to the polls in the last election largely because they believed that their votes wouldn’t make a difference. In some parts of the country there are issues of access that keep people away from the polls; but for most, apathy, disaffection with the process, boredom, and/or the belief that they won’t make a difference kept people home.

We’ve lost touch with our own power, seduced by the belief that our voices and our votes are insignificant and that things will happen around us and to us, no matter what we do. Yet, it is the very faith that piques your interest enough to read this column today that calls you and me to a higher standard and invites us to SHOW UP.

Whatever your faith tradition — whether it be Evangelical Christian, Spiritual but Not Religious, Muslim, Jewish, Pagan, Buddhist, or Protestant (mine), all traditions call followers to make a difference in the world through acts of mercy, social advocacy, and the methods of restorative justice. I have written before about how faith and politics go hand in hand. The voting booth is perhaps the most important place for us to practice our faith and exercise our convictions.

From my Mainline Protestant perspective, I receive guidance from Jesus’ life and teaching. When Jesus spoke his first words in public ministry in the temple he used a text from the Hebrew Bible. Specifically, he read from Isaiah 61: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He did not say that the Lord anointed others to go out and do his work. He said that he himself was anointed to do this work. It is the work that he commissions us all to do in Matthew 25 when he tells those who follow him that they are expected to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, and take care of the sick. He told his followers that whenever they did something for the “least of these” they also did it for him. This is still true.

In the United States we have such power to ensure that these things will happen for all of our citizens. We do this by showing up to the polls, exercising our votes, writing our politicians, volunteering our time, and reflecting our belief that persons who are traditionally marginalized by our political and social systems — those who live in poverty, or who are homeless or who are immigrants or who are prisoners or who are religious minorities, ethnic minorities, or sexual minorities — are valuable and that we care enough to show up, to vote our conscience and to register our faith (in)formed opinion. We are also called to invite others to do the same.

Your faith might call you to a very different voting choice and a deeply different perspective on these very same persons, questions, and issues. But your faith does call you to show up, to cast your vote, to care enough about this world that you are willing to participate and to advocate when and where ever possible.

We are not powerless. We are incredibly powerful, but we have to show up.

In Margaret Mead’s words: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.